1.INTRO
This
text... or something like that, I writing exclusively for myself but if someone
get hands on it, be free and without obstruction read it. The idea is to write
something of past, present and the future of electronic music (house, new
age, electro, techno, trance, ambient, hardcore, jungle, break beat, drum n'
bass, hi-nrg, acid, dance,...).
This what will I write don't take 100% sure, because the truth is only in hands
o them who havepart all of this in industrial culture, but this will be at least
the shadow of the whole thing of the modern art that marked one age of human
culture.
Once upon a time... no, no I won't start like this, I'll start somehow different
this story about electronic music. This story should be started when the electricity
was discovered but it was long time ago, so story will be long but I hope instructive.
When electricy was discovered it was just a question of time when will
somebody try to create art from this moving electrons. Human society (better
said individual) has never been satisfied with instruments that were existing,
so this individuals (and the human society also) always tried to find new, existing
thrilling sounds which they have never heard of felt. This isn't nothing new,
this way has been and would be. If I was born sometimes in the future, maybe
now I'll be writing about some other music or should be called "music"
in the future or something else? Anyway, even now is hard to imagine the new
sounds 'cose the average human ear can hear frequency of sound from 20 Hz to
20000 Hz, of course there are exceptions, and all frequencies are tested so
we can't expect in the future any kind of tremendous breakdown. So we'll be
unable to create new sounds but what we will be able to do is creating new melodies,
new vibes, rhythms,... new combinations of sound that this way of music, we
know now, will be unfamiliar to us. The electricity opened new views in every
part of life. But this branches of life didn't develop with same speed or same
level. Technology, for instance, is developing a lot of faster than
music and still is. In the begining first it was question of creating electrical
instrument. One of the firsts attempts of creating sound based on electrical
is made in Berlin where in the middle 30's Oskar Sala (than a student, born
1910) created his musical instrument which he named Mixtrautorium. By the time Oskar
Sala try to improvethis Mixtrautorium but like this it was able to play only
several tones together. As the technology made progress particulary after second
world war, the possibility of creating electronic musical instrumentrapidly
grow up, so from the "expery-mental" instruments it quickley becomed
instruments for the "masses". The first, so called synthesizer in
the masses production was created by Dr. Robert Moog,and it was called after
him... the Moog synthesizer. After that on the daylight come up all sorts
of rhythm mashines, drums, sequencers, sound blasters,...
Today in trmendes use of computers in music it appear a great demand for
digital music iistruments, instruments that sound transform into binar digits.
Thus, on every digital music instrument produced in the last half of the decade
(from the 1990) from the smallest toys to the most expencives instruments used
by profesionals ther is, at least, one of three annexes : MIDI in, MIDI through
and MIDI out (the obbereviation MIDI means - Musical Instrument Digital
Interface). For example I'll describe one MIDI comunication betwen keyboard
and sound generator or sound module. When we connect MIDI output from the keyboard
to the MIDI in form sound module, we have a conection which create sound. Now,
if we put this into one unit we'll get a synthesizer. Usually this conection
can be disconected with local on / off function so we can play in live with
on function or work in studio with off function. Another help in creating music
have a sequencer. With this piece of gear we can play several instruments at
the same time, because sequencer reads from memory digital data and sends it
to the sound module so one man can replace several players or a whole orcestra.
The role which play computer in all of this is control of input and output,
to memorise data and to comunicate with user. Nowdays in creating music there
are softwares which are standar dor better saidpopular: Cubase (Steinberg),
Notator (C-Lab), Sequencer Plus (Voyerta Technologies), Copyist (Dr. T's Music
Software)... After all of this is imposibile to imagine any kind of modern
music whithout electronic devices, now and of course in the future.
2.
INDUSTRIAL CULTURE
"Industrial
Culture? There has been a phenomena, I don't know whether it's strong
enough to be a culture. I do think what we did has had a reverberation right
around the world and back"..... Genesis P. Orige
This is the answer of Genesis P. Orige (member of break-up group Throbbing Gristle
and with real - born name Neil Megson) about industrial culture, but this answer
was spoken a long time ago (in the 80's), the industrial culture nowdays look
much different. But let's start from begining of electronic music... There
are lot of misunderstanding about origin of electro and techno (but about that
later). Experimental electronic music has been around for 40 - odd years...
even some kind of music similar sound of music similar sound and/or purpose
to "ambient" can be found dating back to the early part of this century,
but the term ambient music is on credit to Brian Eno, who was strongly influenced
by the soft piano music of Erik Satie. The definition of ambient isn't solid
'cose some space music can be called ambient (like music from movie "Forbident
Planet", or others...), some droning guitar rock can be called ambient,
some trance techno can be called ambient... for years some music was called
instrumental. When the term ambient was defined us a part of the enviroment,
music which tends to be tonal and in certain keys, but not that melodic, usually
consisting of heavly procesed electronic drones and sparse, random notes...
now it was enough safely encompass some older works of : David Sylvian, Peter
Gabriel, Einsterzende Neubauten, Chris & Cosey, ... a bit later of
ambient, let's back to the story of industrial music. In the mid. 70's electronic
music was popularised by German group Kraftwerk (Ralf Hutter, Florian Schneider,
Karl Bartos and Wolfang Flur). Their album "Autobahn" (1974) becomed
the symbol of electro in 70's. So Kraftwerk can be considered us establishers
of electronic music and the whole modern music. The term "Industrial"
music come up from the name of the record label called "Industrial
Records". Here are few groups which were released on Industrial Records:
Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, Thomas Leer, Robert Rental,
Monte Cazazza, S.P.K., The Leather Nun, Elizabeth Welsh...
Industrial music was fundamentaly a music of ideas. The early industrial groups
(a lot of them) didn't had any real musical background or knowlege. Anyway this
music was music of ideas, like J.P.Orridge has said: "The idea:
to heal and reintegrate the houman character. To set off physic detonations
that negate control... to exchange and liberate information... We need
to search for methods to break the preconceptions, modes of unthinking acceptance
and expectations that make us within our constructed behaviour patterns, so
vulnerable to Control. "Writing in Alternative Press, Michael Mahan attempted
to define industrial music as "an artistic reflection of the de-humanisation
of our people and the inexorable pollution of our planet by our factoy - based
socio - econome state". But Mahan also mentioned few names like: Edgar
Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen, David Vorhaus, Frank Zappa, Klaus Schulze,
... Jan Savage has elsewhere indentified five areas zhat characterised industrial
music: acess to information, organisational autonomy, extra - musical elements,
and use of synthesizers and anti-music. But there's also contribution
(direct or indirect) to the industrial music from: OMD, Depeche Mode, New Order,
Todd Dockstader, Gordon Mumma, Michel Redolfi, Iannis Xenakis, Steve Reich,
Mark Shreeve, Laibach, AMM,...
to be continued, soon.